featured blog posts

There is no point trying to deny it any longer: the election of Donald Trump has made the world a much more dangerous place. Suppose you are a national leader with ambitions that run counter to the interests of the US or of the Western powers more generally. With the EU in disarray, and a buffoon in the White House, what better opportunity will you have to put your plans into action?

Though most other "isms" were piled on the ballot scales at some point in the USA Presidential election, ageism never seemed much of a factor with the electorate. Perhaps this was because both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were well beyond what we still laughingly call, "normal retirement age".

We flew out to Orlando, Florida on 2 November 2016, with a week to go before the election to central Florida, a key part of a marginal swing State with a significant number of Electoral College votes. We were assigned by the local Democrat Party campaign office to canvass Hunters Creek, in Orange County, which we were told was the third most significant area in the country...

Facebook has followed the lead of Google and banned fake news sites from using its advertising network. This comes hot on the trail of public scrutiny surrounding the social network's unwitting proliferation of articles containing false information.

I wouldn't throw in the towel just yet. I doubt as sophisticated a politician as Clinton would thank us for claiming that her gender was the cause of her defeat. In a way, there's no better demonstration of her leadership qualities than this. She fought a good fight against a tough opponent. She took the risk. She lost. The next woman may win.

Have a scroll down your twitter timeline and you might find that everyone is still, at worst, professing about the apocalypse, or at best offering election post-mortems based on analysis of pundits who predicted a Hillary cakewalk. Seemingly contrary to popular belief, after Trump's election, the sun did not cease to shine and life has carried on.

Deep divisions have cracked open this country, deeper than many understood before. They know it at last. While one side celebrates, and everyone in the middle watches on uncertainly, the liberal heartlands grief for what could have been and what now is. Four years seems a lifetime away.

While we have no say in who becomes President of the United States and we definitely can't do anything to change it, we do have a choice in how we treat others. Neither gender nor race, sexuality or anything else for that matter should determine how we treat one another. Our differences should unite not divide us and to end as I began, with the words of Hillary Clinton, "love trumps hate."

As the presidency of a man with a documented disregard and dislike for women unfolds, no one will pay more heavily for their own vote than these women. Meanwhile, when asked what kind of woman would vote for Trump, the rest of the educated, civilised world can only reply: a deeply threatened one.

Without wanting to draw another needless parallel between the Trump victory and the UK EU Referendum result, or indeed rail against another monumental disaster for polling companies, we must ask ourselves why we didn't 'know' this was going to happen?

I had to take a deep breath last night when a work colleague of mine - a young, gay man - called me over on my break because he wanted to talk about Donald Trump. "Isn't it exciting?" he said, "Trump is something completely different, I'd probably have voted for him. He isn't a politician, he's something new."

The immediate consequences of the US election result have been chilling. In Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang, as well as among Islamic extremists and Burma's Buddhist nationalists, and in almost every authoritarian regime in the world, there have been celebrations. May President-elect Trump prove us all wrong...

With Trump in the White House and the Democrats out of power for at least four years, the latter now need to formulate a strategy to win back the voters that have deserted them. If they don't, whoever stands in 2020 runs the risk of making the same costly mistakes as Clinton.

About Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is an American politician and the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election. She served as the 67th United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, the junior United States Senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, and First Lady of Arkansas during his governorship from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992. Source: Wikipedia